


The Making of a Hero

by estelraca



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca
Summary: Finn is the one who goes to find Luke Skywalker and bring him back to the Resistance.  Some things go differently; some are exactly the same.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: A Light in the Dark: A Star Wars Solstice Exchange (2019)





	The Making of a Hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saphsaq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saphsaq/gifts).



> This was a fascinating prompt that I had a lot of fun playing with! I hope that you enjoy it, and thank you so much for participating in the exchange.

_The Making of a Hero_

Finn perches the X-wing on a bit of mostly-barren rock, surveying the land that he's found.

_This_ is where the last, greatest Jedi went to ground?

There's nothing special about the planet. It's clearly habitable—there are small, basic shelters scattered here and there. There's plant life and animal life. There's water, stretching across big chunks of the planet. It could be any of a hundred, a _thousand_ other worlds. He'd assumed the place he'd been looking for would be... special, somehow.

Shouldn't a Jedi want to hole up somewhere where there were either a _lot_ of people or _no_ people? Shouldn't they want something... something...

Finn gives his head a shake. This is where the map led. This is where Skywalker is supposed to be. Now all he has to do is find the Jedi and convince him to follow Finn back to the Resistance.

It shouldn't be that hard, right? Finn hasn't had a chance to hear many stories, but he's had a chance to hear a few. Luke Skywalker was the man who defeated the Empire. He destroyed the first Death Star on his own. He killed both the Emperor and Vader at Endor. He was a hero, someone special, someone who didn't give up no matter what was happening around him.

Maybe he's someone Finn can learn from. Maybe he's someone that can help make Finn into the hero he's pretended to be with Rey—the hero that Poe thinks he can be.

It takes Finn a good two hours to find the crag that Skywalker is perched on. Does the man intend to live up to his name? Does he just like cliffs? Is staring out at the water some kind of Jedi thing?

Finn keeps his eyes mostly on the ground as he picks his way up the side of the crag. He had tried calling out to Skywalker from the base, but the man hadn't even seemed to notice him. Perhaps some things are just better done from close up.

When he's about ten paces from Skywalker's back, Finn pauses to look through his pack, searching for the relic that Rey had entrusted him with. _There_ it is, underneath the ration bars, wrapped in the extra shirt.

Finn weighs the lightsaber in his hand for a moment, contemplating whether he really wants to give it away. He had felt... good, when he held Rey's and faced off against Kylo Ren. His fight hadn't lasted for long, but why should it have been expected to? The lightsaber is like no other weapon he's ever held, and Kylo Ren had clearly been well-versed in the use of it. But with practice—Finn is _good_ at weapons, always has been—

No. He was entrusted with this, and he intends to do what Rey asked him to do.

Raising his head, he takes two steps towards the Jedi—and realizes that Skywalker has turned and is watching him.

"Uh..." Finn blanks on the words he had intended to say. "Hi. My name's Finn."

Skywalker's brow furrows. "No, it's not."

Finn feels his blood stop flowing in his veins, and he forces himself to take a deep breath. "Yes, it is." Poe gave him the name, and Finn has since claimed it as his own. Whatever powers this Jedi has to let him see that it still doesn't quite fit right can't invalidate that the name is _his_.

Skywalker raises both eyebrows, turning away from Finn with a look that clearly says he doesn't believe him.

"Wait." Finn takes two more steps towards the man, leaving him close enough to touch the Jedi. Assuming he was an idiot with a death wish. "It wasn't my name until... until not very long ago. My name—my _number_ was FN-2187. But someone who thought I could be a hero called me Finn, and I like it a lot better."

Skywalker turns back around, and there is something like pity in his eyes. "You were a stormtrooper?"

Finn doesn't need this man's pity. But he does need his help, so he tries to be cool, calm, collected, everything he was taught to be during his training. "Yes. But I didn't like what the First Order was doing, and I got out when I saw an opportunity."

"And now?" Skywalker looks down at the weapon in Finn's hand.

Finn holds it out to him. "I was sent to find you. To give you this, and to tell you that the Resistance needs your help."

Skywalker studies the lightsaber, then reaches his hand out to take it. His hands—one flesh, one mechanical—are steady, his eyes running over every detail on the old weapon.

Then he spins, arm pulling back, clearly intent on throwing the weapon off the side of the cliff.

"Are you _crazy_?" Finn leaps up, grabbing Skywalker's arm near the elbow and keeping him from completing the throw. His voice echoes back to him from the rock.

"Some people would say so." Skywalker's feet haven't budged, and Finn gets the curious impression that if Skywalker wanted to he could hurl _both_ Finn and the lightsaber over the edge of the cliff. "This isn't yours, and I don't want it."

"If you don't want it, then I'm claiming salvage rights." Finn continues to hold on to the older man, trying to put together what he's seeing here with the whispers he heard from Resistance members. "You can't just throw something like this into the sea!"

"Watch me." With a shrug of his shoulder, Skywalker somehow sends Finn tumbling to the ground. With slow, easy grace he launches the lightsaber over the edge of the cliff.

Finn watches it tumble down, feeling his face flush with humiliation and frustration. Scrambling to his feet, he squares off with Skywalker again. "Great. Fantastic. You just destroyed a weapon the Resistance could have used because you didn't _like_ it. Very mature. Very heroic. Very Jedi."

"Whoever told you I was any of those things—"

" _General Leia Organa_ told me. You know, the lady you helped defeat the Empire with?" Finn sticks his right hand out over the edge of the cliff. "The lady who wanted to send you another Force sensitive to train? The lady who _trusts_ you?"

"Leia..." For a moment Skywalker's expression softens, and his eyes are clearly seeing something other than Finn. Then he shakes his head, turning away from Finn. "I'm glad she didn't send me anyone to train, because I'm not going to. She knows that. I'm done with the Jedi. I'm done with the war."

For two, three, four seconds Finn just stares after Skywalker's retreating back. He can't believe this is happening. After all the trouble everyone went to in order to recover the map—after all the people who _died—_ Skywalker is just going to walk away without even talking to him?

"Hey!" Finn skids and almost falls as he skitters down the mountain after Skywalker. "Hey! You can't just walk away from me."

"Yes, I can." Skywalker doesn't even turn to acknowledge him. "This is me, walking away."

"But—but everyone's counting on you!" Finn tries to put himself in Skywalker's way and finds that he simply... can't. Every time he tries his foot doesn't go where he intended, and he ends up just to one side or the other of Skywalker's path. "General Organa is counting on you. Rey needs you to train her. The Resistance needs some _hope_ , and _you're_ what they're counting on. You have to—"

They've reached a little hovel, a creation of wood and thatch. Skywalker walks in the door and closes it behind him, leaving Finn sputtering outside.

For a few seconds Finn just stares at the closed door. He can't believe this is happening. He can't believe he made it here only to find... what? A bitter old man who won't even listen to him?

No.

Skywalker is going to listen to him. Finn is _certain_ of that.

Trying to open the door isn't successful, so Finn rears back and puts his shoulder into it. All _that_ succeeds in doing is giving him a sore shoulder. Since he can't even see any kind of lock keeping it closed, he doesn't have a target to aim his blaster at.

"Skywalker!" Finn shouts the words at the closed door. "Skywalker, you come out here and face me, you coward!"

There's no answer from the little hovel.

Did Finn really expect one? How pathetic does he sound, shouting at the Jedi as though they were both six?

Though since the Jedi is _acting_ like he's six—

Finn stalks around the little establishment, looking for a way in. He doesn't find anything useful, and trying the doors and windows only leads to frustration.

What does he do now? Does he just... go back? Does he tell the general what he found?

Will she even _believe_ him?

"Some hero you turned out to be." The words are full of deep frustration, not shouted, just spoken to the uncaring universe.

The door of the hovel creaks open, and Skywalker stands silhouetted in the doorway. "That matters a lot to you. Being a hero."

Finn just stares at the man, not daring to say anything, afraid he's going to cause Skywalker to retreat again.

Skywalker sighs, leaning on the door-frame. "Go ahead and talk. I won't run."

"I don't know." The words rush out of Finn, a good synopsis of the last crazy week of his life. "I don't _know_. I left the First Order because it was _wrong_ , because we killed civilians, because one of my friends died... and when I left I just wanted to get _away_. I just didn't want to die in some stupid, horrific way."

"Most people feel that way." It isn't pity in Skywalker's voice now, Finn doesn't think. It's... understanding, and he remembers that Skywalker and Organa fought for three years against the Empire, watching who knows how many people die in the process.

"Yeah, well..." Finn sighs. "Then I met this girl. Woman. She didn't have anything, but she... she wanted to help people. She _did_ help people. She thought I was hero, that I was like her... and I wanted to be."

Skywalker's lips curve in a faint, bitter smile. "For the girl?"

"For her. And... for me." Finn looks down at his empty hands. "I was good during training. I know how to fight. But I couldn't be a soldier. I couldn't just follow orders. So maybe... maybe I could be a hero. Except _that's_ fucking terrifying and awful, too."

"Yes. Yes, it is." Skywalker sighs. "It's terrifying and it's draining and it destroys you, slowly, piece by piece, until you become something like the monsters you've been fighting."

Finn studies Skywalker, his eyes moving from the man's face down to his steady hands and down to his feet before returning to those tired, tired eyes. "What did you do? Who did you hurt?"

Skywalker turns away, but not before Finn sees him close his eyes.

"That's it, isn't it?" Finn feels a combination of bitter certainty and elation well up in him. At least he's got an idea about what's happened now. "You hurt someone and you just... you just _gave up_."

"You have no idea what happened—"

"No, I don't. Because instead of _talking_ to people, you went and hid on some stupid backwater planet and left the people who depended on you to suffer and _die_! Did you know Han Solo died? Did you know that he _saved_ me, he saved Rey, he acted like a big damned hero despite his son being a _monster_? He was supposed to be your friend, right? He was supposed to be—"

"Stop. Talking." Skywalker's words are the softest whisper, but Finn finds he's physically incapable of disobeying them.

Try as he might, he can't get his jaw to work. He can't get his mouth to _open_. It's hard to breathe. It's—

Skywalker turns around, and his mouth twists in a moment of terrible emotion.

Finn gasps in a deep, rasping breath.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that." Skywalker's own breath is shaky. "Han Solo was my friend, yes. And I feel his absence in the Force, and I am sorry I couldn't be there for him. But I'm not the savior that you're looking for."

"We're not looking for a _savior_." Finn considers. "Okay, some of us aren't. Rey just wants a _teacher_. She's so ridiculously good at all this Force stuff, and Leia knows a bit and is trying to teach her, but _you—_ "

"You've seen my last attempt at teaching." Skywalker meets his eyes, and there is something _broken_ in the man's gaze, something aching and empty and lost. It resonates with parts of Finn that he would rather forget exist, so much so that he almost misses Skywalker's next words. "My last attempt at teaching now calls himself Kylo Ren."

Finn just stares at Skywalker. "But... I thought... Solo said..."

"Yes. He was the son of my sister and my best friend—the two people I abandoned my own training to go try to save, once." Luke smiles a bitter, lost smile. "They entrusted me with their son to teach, because he was the second-strongest Force user anyone in the universe knew about. And instead of teaching him to be a hero, I turned him into a monster."

" _You_ didn't make him into a monster." Finn clenches his jaw, flexes his hands as he remembers staring into Kylo Ren's eyes. "He keeps _choosing_ to be a monster. He works for the First Order _willingly_. He orders the slaughter of people who can't even fight back. He..." Finn feels his throat tightening but forces himself to keep speaking. "He killed Solo. He killed his own _father_ , when Han had disarmed himself and was trying to _help_ him."

"Ben killed..." Luke puts a hand over his face, drawing another shaking breath. "I should have known that. I should have..."

"You should have _been_ there. You should be there _now_." Finn takes a step towards the broken Jedi. "If you think that you did something to Kylo Ren—"

"I tried to kill him." Skywalker's words are curiously flat, his gaze meeting Finn's in a dare. "When he was in my care, when he was just a _child_ , the Force showed me glimpses of... of _this_. Of the monster he would become. And I took my lightsaber, and I stood over him, and I thought about _killing my nephew_. And in doing that I set in motion all of the horror that we're seeing today."

"No." Finn stares into Skywalker's eyes and begins slowly shaking his head. "No, you didn't. Whatever you did—and I've got no doubt it wasn't pretty, to fuck you up the way it has—it wasn't what started all this. I _know_ , all right? I've been the First Order's all my life. Kylo Ren is a monster, but he's only one of a hundred."

"Yes." Skywalker sighs. "He's one of a thousand, despite everything Leia and Han and me and the rest of us did. We helped win the galaxy free, and because everything wasn't perfect _immediately_ , within thirty years it all started falling apart again. What difference will it make if I go back now?"

"I don't know." Finn answers honestly. "I've been tempted to run away. A lot. To try to find somewhere that's far enough away that the First Order won't reach it. Do you think I could find a place like that?" He should stop there, he knows, but he can't. "Do you think I can find a little island somewhere and pretend that there's no dangers out there, that no one's counting on me or missing me?"

"You've got spirit, kid." There's a ghost of Han Solo in the way Skywalker says the words, in the bitter smile that he sends Finn's way. "But it's not that easy. I'm here because there's important history here. Books. Gateways. Jedi artifacts, you could say. I'm protecting them and trying to find..."

"Absolution?" The word is ashes on Finn's tongue, and he remembers a bloody handprint on a white helmet. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. That even if you try to do something to make up for the past, you can't actually manage that." He remembers the look in Rey's eyes when she asked if he was with the Resistance, the hope and excitement that instantly bloomed there. "But maybe... maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the past is past and all that matters is what we do going forward. What we try to be now."

"In which case it doesn't matter that people thought I was a hero, right?" Luke gives his head a tired shake. "Go back to your friends. Tell Leia... tell her I'm sorry, but I can't be what she wants or needs right now. Find another way, or start looking for your own little planet."

"That's it." Finn can hear the anger in his voice just as clearly as the finality in Skywalker's. "That's all you're giving me?"

"I don't have anything else left." Luke pulls his hood up over his head and turns back to his house, clearly done with the conversation.

Finn looks after the Jedi's retreating back, and then turns away with quick, jerky motions. Fine, then. If Skywalker won't help them, he'll find some other way to help Rey. Surely General Organa has other plans. Surely the Resistance doesn't hinge on one old man.

His steps carry him back towards his X-wing, his anger dissipating with each step and leaving behind only cold fear. If he goes back like this... if he brings nothing...

If he rejoins the Resistance and they _lose_...

His eyes are on his feet. It's the only reason he notices the pebbles tumbling in a way that pebbles are not supposed to tumble, moving against gravity and against the angle of his footfalls.

He waits for a moment, and then follows the pebbles. What does he have to lose, after all?

They lead him on a winding path through the rocks of the island, and just when he's about to give up he finds... he doesn't know _what_ it is. A tree? A really _old_ tree?

A _hollow_ tree, and inside the tree...

If he can't bring the general a Jedi, perhaps he can bring her the next best thing.

Finn gathers up the books, stuffing them in his pack and running as fast as he can towards the X-wing and the freedom it promises.

If Skywalker wants his books, he'll have to follow Finn back to the Resistance.

XXX

Luke stands in the empty tree, feeling the absence of the books like a physical ache. Something has changed, though he's not exactly sure what. He looks around, feeling with the Force, but he isn't able to find any other conscious mind nearby. "If one of you Force spirits did this as a joke, I'm going to hunt you for all eternity for it."

No one answers, though Luke can hear the responses he would want—Yoda's gleeful little laugh, Obi-wan either sighing or chuckling.

Finn shouldn't have been able to find this place, let alone rob it without Luke being any the wiser. He _must_ have had help, either from someone else Force sensitive or from the ghosts that still haunt Luke himself.

"I can't go back." Luke shivers, pulling his robes tighter around himself. "I'm not the person the Resistance thinks I am. I'm not the person _Leia_ thinks I am. I failed them."

He is not the man who could get up from every blow, who could learn that Vader was his father and lose a limb and just keep _going_.

How had he done it, then? He knows that he _did_. He remembers the jump, the certainty that he could find a way to escape, the desperate hope as he used all his young Force sensitivity to reach for Leia.

He couldn't do it now. He has so much more power at his fingertips, so much more skill and finesse, but he doesn't think he ever would have reached that little dangling vane. It wouldn't have been a jump, a leap of faith and hope; it would have been a tumble, a fall into the abyss, one that he wouldn't try to save himself from.

He would have doomed Han.

He would have doomed Leia.

The rebellion.

The _universe_.

"And what did it get me? What did it _do_ , moving forward? Reaching and trying and _trying_ until I just _couldn't_?" His hand clenches into a fist, and it would be so very, very easy to let the anger rise up. So very, very simple, to give into the darkness.

As simple as it's been to give into the hopelessness.

" _Yes_." He answers the question all of the unseen ghosts are asking. " _Yes_ , I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what I've done to Ben, and what he's done to his family, and what's happening in the universe... and what _I_ could do, if I let myself."

But if he does nothing...

If he stays here...

"When I went to save them, before, everyone said it was a terrible idea. That I was falling into a trap, and that my emotions were being used against me. And you were right, Yoda. About all of it." Luke draws in a shaking breath. "But I _did_ save them. I saved Leia, and we were able to save Han together, and even if this is how it ends..."

Can he say that it mattered, the fact that they had some time together? The fact that they had a decade, a little more, and it was _happy_... does that make up for all that's come after?

"He's a hero, whether he thinks he is or not." Luke presses his hand to the ground. "To walk away from the First Order, to resist them just because it's the right thing to do... he's a hero."

The Force is there for him, as it always is—a swirl of power, of _life_ , of energy throughout the universe.

"I can't be a hero. People who threaten children can't be heroes."

Levering himself to his feet, Luke gives one last look around the space that has been his heart's home. "But I guess I'm not enough of a coward to stay here and pretend nothing he said or has done mattered."

He doesn't know what's going to happen. He doesn't know if it's going to _matter_ , in the end. He doesn't know if Leia will hate him or welcome him home, after all that's happened. He doesn't even know which he _wants_.

But he'll go and he'll see, and he'll do what he can.

Maybe, if the Force is with them, it will be enough.


End file.
